


The Worship of Ashes

by koios



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, And Ozai doesn’t exactly get his kids the best psych care, Autistic Zuko (Avatar), Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula Joins the Gaang (Avatar), Azula Needs Therapy (Avatar), Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, I promise they will both get therapy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai just looks at his kids and thinks ‘hmm how can I most seriously fuck up both of them’, Physical Abuse, Role Reversal, Sibling Rivalry, Ursa (Avatar) is a Good Parent, Zuko (Avatar) Needs Therapy, coded autistic because idk if there’s a word for it in the atlaverse, ish, no beta we die like lu ten, non graphic but very much there, to Azula at least lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-26 15:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30108126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koios/pseuds/koios
Summary: Zuko is born lucky. Azula is lucky to be born.Ozai’s decision to favour one child over the other changes everything, and not much at allBased on@kawaiichibiart’s AU on tumblr
Relationships: Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & The Gaang (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula doesn’t really have a brother. She has a rival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this is based on the AU I linked, there are a few things my chaos gremlin brain insisted on changing lol - definitely check out the original posts! There’s a bunch of stuff I didn’t get into the fic or changed. Also, [kawaiichibiart](https://kawaiichibiart.tumblr.com/) is a lovely person and you should definitely follow for their art and AU ideas

Azula’s earliest memory is of Zuko and mother, sitting with her by the turtleduck pond. She doesn’t understand all the words, and they’re mostly meaningless, but she remembers mother holding her and Zuko leaning over to her with a huge grin. Maybe she made that part up. She has no other memories of Zuko smiling like that. In almost every other memory, his smiles are tiny and fleeting, or completely absent. He’s usually good at emptying his face, masking whatever’s behind with careful apathy. She knows she only saw him smile at father once.

She remembers what happens next, though: father arrives, says something to Zuko, then leaves, taking her brother with him. Mother had looked so sad when Azula glanced back, but pulled her close, kissed the top of her head and said “I love you so much, Azula.”.

———

She grows quickly, and learns quicker. She learns that Zuko is father’s favourite, and that she is mother’s. She learns that the best way to annoy Zuko is to call him Zuzu, but he secretly likes it. She learns that Zuko always tells the truth, and that that’s a bad thing. She learns that anything Zuko learns finds its way back to father almost instantly.  
She learns that she loves him, and he loves her, but father’s love is the most important type to earn. 

Mother says that she loves Azula, and always will, no matter what. Azula secretly thinks that’s the best kind of love, but she’s also learned that expressing that if they’re anything but alone is a bad idea.

She learns later, at the age of five, that if she wants love from father, she has to earn it like Zuko does. Zuko, she learns, will do almost anything for it - he tells father everything, does everything he asks, moulds himself into whatever father wants him to be. He’s a very good actor. 

She learns that lying and acting are very different things. Zuko is the best actor, but Azula can lie like it’s her native language.

———

Azula learns that Zuko can’t lie when she’s six, and he’s eight, and they knock over a vase on one of the rare afternoons they just play together. They weren’t even playing with it, just racing through the corridor that happens to take them by father’s office. Someone trips, and someone pushes the other, and someone crashes into the table and sends the ceramic to the ground with a horrible crash and clatter.

Father appears seconds later, tall and imperious and furious. “What happened here?” His eyes fix on Zuko instantly, and her brother pulls himself to his feet and lies.

“We- we were playing. I, um, knocked it over, I’m sorry-“

He’s a bad liar. He’s so bad Azula can see why he never tries.

Father sees how bad he is too, and hits him so hard he stumbles back and falls into some of the shards of pottery on the floor. Something like tears build up in the back of Azula’s eyes, but she pushes them back. She knows better than to show weakness.

She doesn’t get hit as hard, but she’s sent to her room for longer. Their doors are side by side, and she hears father come and let Zuko out the next morning. Hers won’t open until late afternoon. She can’t make out the words, but father’s anger seems to be cooler. Safer.

Zuko never lies for her again.

———

The rules are different for her and Zuko. Azula is better than him - a lot better - a better liar, a better bender, a better strategist. But she’s still not good enough to take Zuko’s position at father’s side, no matter how many hours she trains, no matter how perfect she is, no matter how much she proves she’s just like father. 

She does everything right. She watches father and Zuko, tries copying one, then the other, then both, but she’s still ignored or met with bitter disdain. Sometimes when father isn’t looking, Zuko will give her a little smile, or a casual touch. But she doesn’t want that. Not from him, at least.

She notices how father talks, how he trips people up with their own words, and proves to him that she can do the same. Mother doesn’t like it, but she understands. Father doesn’t like it either, which Azula can’t understand. She can talk people into anything, out of anything. Trick them into thinking and saying things, ignore the looks of hurt and betrayal when she turns on them. Father is merciless, so she is too.  
But he still doesn’t seem to understand that she’s so much better, so much more useful. But he still chooses Zuko.

———

But mother is all hers. She never says it, but Azula knows that mother doesn’t act the same way with Zuko. He doesn’t get tucked in at night, read to, sung to. Azula asks why once, and mother gives her a strange look before telling her that father says he can look after Zuko on his own.

Azula doesn’t really have a brother. She has a rival.

When she was little, before she learned not to ask Zuko questions she wasn’t ready to be answered, she asks why father seems to like him more. He says he’s the oldest and father’s heir, and in the line of succession Azula is the spare.

Mother overhears and snaps at him, tells him not to be so cruel to his little sister. Azula doesn’t listen to the rest of the argument. She realises that she doesn’t have to be as good as Zuko in father’s eyes - she has to be better. 

——-

Cousin Lu Ten is annoying. He’s loud and talks too much and drags Azula and Zuko into his stupid games and plans - and nothing he ever does seems to make Uncle Iroh love him any less. Father doesn’t like Lu Ten, so Azula knows he’s not worth her time. She only goes with him because he bugs her until she gives in. 

“Come on, Zula,” he practically whines, tugging her along by the hand. She glares hard at the back of his head at the nickname. Azula is a princess of the Fire Nation, named after the Firelord himself! “It’ll be fun!”

That’s Lu Ten’s excuse for pretty much everything. It somehow works with Uncle Iroh, every time. 

“It better be good,” she grumbles. She meets Zuko’s eyes, and he looks equally dubious, if not more anxious, as he half jogs to keep up with them.

“Of course it’ll be good,” Lu Ten huffs good-naturedly. “All my ideas are good.”

The look Zuko and Azula share is even more dubious.

It turns out that Lu Ten’s idea is spectacularly bad. Azula is five and she already knows that setting off the palace’s supply of fireworks is one of the dumbest things they could do! Zuko is an idiot and he knows it’s one of the dumbest things they could do!

But father is away on a visit to Fire Fountain City that week...

When half of the guards and a quarter of the staff come running at the noise and light, Azula finds herself giggling as quietly as she can until her chest aches, curled up in an abandoned shed with her cousin and brother.

When Uncle Iroh finds them and just sighs at Lu Ten, before chuckling quietly and hugging him, it only stings a little bit.

———

By the time Lu Ten leaves for the war, she knows better than to let it show.

———

She advances through firebending training so fast she has to change teachers several times when she outperforms them. She’s on track to become the youngest firebending master in the nation. 

On the rare occasion father watches her lessons, she ensures she is flawless, makes sure there’s nothing he can correct or chide her for. When she moves up to the intermediate sets aged six, she thinks she sees him smile at her.

Later that day, Zuko finds her in the gardens practicing alone. She ignores him at first, just keeps running through her katas until he says something.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are at bending. You won’t win.”

Mother insists that there aren’t any competitions they need to win. Mother isn’t here.

“I won’t lose to you.” Azula doesn’t stop her practice, just moves on to the next set (the one Zuko can’t do without falling over).

“Just because you can bend doesn’t fix the reasons father doesn’t like you.”

That finally stops her, and she spins around to glare at him. “I’m the best at everything!” She insists. “There aren’t any reasons!”

“Then why do you think he likes me more?” Zuko snaps. He’s getting angry too, but he doesn’t let it show for long. He’s getting better at that.

“Obviously he’s stupid, because no one should like a dumdum like you!”

Zuko’s eyes go wide and he turns and runs. It suddenly occurs to Azula that father is a prince, and no one can say a prince is wrong. But he’s too fast, and already gone and all Azula can do is wait to see what father will do to her.

———

Nothing happens. Either Zuko didn’t tell, or father is waiting. The not knowing was the worst - because as much as Zuko told father, there were always things that didn’t reach him. Azula was never sure why, but sometimes father would know exactly how many times Azula had repeated a form to get it right, but he wouldn’t know that she and Zuko had overheard a servant complaining in a way that verged on treasonous.

A week later, she’s certain father doesn’t know. Mother suggests they take a break and go to Ember Island to celebrate Azula’s bending progress, and he agrees.

———

Ember Island is her favourite place, and all of her memories of it are tinted with the warm glow of mother. Father and Zuko often end up somewhere else, and Azula can’t even bring herself to be jealous that Zuko gets more time with father, because she has the beach and the sun and mother.

Father and Zuko stay in the house, or do something else she can’t bring herself to care about. Mother takes her on walks across the sand, shows her the fish flashing under the clear water, teaches her to swim. Azula hates swimming at first, hates having to kick and splash and trust she won’t go under with mother’s hands under her. That doesn’t mean she stops - she keeps going until she’s perfect. Mother always says she doesn’t have to be, but Azula knows better.

Her favourite parts of those holidays are always lunchtime picnics, watching mother spread out a blanket on the sand and unpacking bāo zi, tāng yuán, jiaozi. She even listens to mother’s stories, mostly from plays. Azula doesn’t see the point in theatre, but mother sounds happy when she talks about the Dragon Emperor or whatever, so Azula only groans and rolls her eyes a little. 

“It’s a lovely story!” Mother says, tone light as she pokes Azula in the side. “One day you’ll understand.”

“It’s dumb and boring! Why would he go back to being human anyway?”

“It’s about love,” mother laughs.

“Love is dumb. I want a dragon.”

She pouts when mother laughs again and says “you can’t have a dragon.”

“Why?” She’s definitely not whining.

When mother grins at her, she looks like a different person. Nothing like she ever does in Caldera. “Because you are a dragon!” And then she grabs Azula and tickles her until she’s gasping and sending sand flying everywhere with her flailing.

That night, mother quietly reads her her favourite scenes from the play by flickering candlelight. 

———

Zuko leaves to train with a sword master when he’s eight, and Azula teases him mercilessly for being so bad at bending he needs swords. But it is strange when he’s not there anymore, until she leaves too.

She’s sent to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls when she’s six. She stays until she’s eight, and her teachers say she can’t learn any more from them. She comes home the same day as her brother, and manages not to be too annoyed he gets a celebration too. When she proudly tells father why they sent her home, Zuko says he heard the teachers don’t want to deal with her anymore. No one comments on why Zuko came home early, until Azula points out that he was trained by a deserter and traitor, and that he might have picked up on some bad habits.

Mother sends Zuko to his room, and father sends Azula to hers. She tunes out them arguing in their quarters down the hall and writes two letters to the girls she can almost call her friends. Mother said she should invite them over, but she doesn’t put that in the letters.

At the academy, she’s the best and no one dares challenge it. Mai and Ty Lee may be hers, but everyone responds to power. If she wants to keep them, she can’t keep them anywhere she isn’t in control.

———

The day her flame flickers blue, mother is watching, and she laughs and smiles and picks Azula up and spins her around like she’s two again. She looks so happy Azula doesn’t think for once - she knows where father will be, and runs to show him. He’ll be happy, proud, he’ll smile at her and finally recognise what she’s capable of.

It’s mid afternoon, when he trains with Zuko. She’s never seen one of their training sessions before, but she knows Zuko has a lot more than her. At first, father is furious at the interruption - but then he sees her fire.

He smiles at her, proudly, the first time she can remember, but it doesn’t feel good.

———

“How’d you do it?” Zuko asks her quietly one night, half shadowed in her doorway. He’s getting better and better at being quiet. Sometimes she forgets he’s even there if he doesn’t talk. 

He’s getting better at pretending he’s not angry too, but not right now.

“I just made it hotter, dumdum.”

He’s not getting better at not starting fights, so she’s a little surprised when he just huffs and walks away.

———

A few months later, Zuko’s fire changes too. It’s nothing anyone has seen before, and Azula might be jealous if she could look away from it. The Sages call it dragonfire - white, laced with more colours than Azula has ever seen. It’s a thing of beauty, and even Azula can’t deny it.  
Zuko doesn’t seem to think so. He keeps training and training, but it will never stay just one hue.

When she’s nine and he’s eleven, father sets them against each other in a spar. Azula leaves him with shallow burns up his arms, but even when his fire touches her, it can’t seem to burn.

That’s one of the only times she sees father truly angry with Zuko.

———

Uncle sends gifts from Ba Sing Se. Azula burns her doll and steals Zuko’s knife, but mother gently tells her to give it back. She throws it at him, and father leaves a handprint shaped burn around her wrist.  
It didn’t even hit him.

She isn’t sure she likes father as much as mother anymore.

She corners Zuko later, practically sparking in outrage and tells him that it’s not fair. He says that things aren’t fair, and waiting for things to go her way isn’t going to get anything done. 

“Doing things like that isn’t going to help you with father, and I don’t think it’ll make mother like you any more either.”

So she punches a blast of fire at him.

———

When cousin Lu Ten dies, mother and Zuko are the only ones who openly care. It should bring them together, Azula thinks. She’s heard people say that grief does that. But it doesn’t, it just means Azula gets held tighter when mother cries, and Zuko does it silently so father doesn’t have to pay attention.

Azula cries once, alone in her room. She didn’t know Lu Ten all that well. He treated her like a child, and always seemed to want to play with her brother anyway. But knowing she’ll never see him again sends a strange, cold, clawing feeling through her.

She ignores it all through the funeral, and through the next few days of mother mourning silently. They often spent afternoons in the gardens after Azula’s lessons were over (but never by the turtleduck pond) and mother mostly sits silently while Azula reads or runs katas or just quietly talks to fill the cloying quiet.

About a week later, father tells them over dinner that he’s set up a meeting with Firelord Azulon. That seems to snap mother out of it, at least a little. He tells her and Zuko to prepare bending demonstrations, and a little part of her is pleased when Zuko looks momentarily panicked. 

She creeps into his room that night to tease him. “Don’t worry, Zuzu. You’ll screw it up, but at least when grandfather gets rid of you, we won’t have to deal with you anymore.”

The look he gives her is furious, practically blazing. “I’m not the disposable one, Azula.”

She scorches part of his bed frame and storms out. When mother asks what happened, she doesn’t lie (well, not entirely). She leans against the wall outside the room as mother ‘talks’ to him and smiles.

———

One of the first things she notes is how old her grandfather is. Firelord Azulon is still imposing and intimidating, but even behind a curtain of fire, he’s just a man. Still, he’s the Firelord.

Azula’s demonstration is perfect, not a hair out of place. She keeps her fire steady and blue, and sits next to mother with a swell of pride when she’s done.  
Zuko stumbles. Just once, but she feels a tiny smirk cross her face. It almost makes it worth it that she has to see the smile on father’s lips. No one’s looking at Zuko when he bends. Just his fire.

Grandfather snaps at them to stop wasting his time and get to the point. Azula likes him. She, mother and Zuko are ushered out, and Zuko tries to tug her behind the curtains to listen in. She rolls her eyes at him and runs off after mother.

———

He appears at her bedroom door hours later, when Azula is half asleep in bed.

“Azula?”

“What do you want, Zuzu?”

He scowls, but drops it a second later. “Don’t you want to know what I heard?”

“No.” She lies. She wants to know desperately, but she won’t beg. He shrugs and leaves.

Hours later, when mother and father are yelling at each other down the hall, loud enough to keep her awake but not enough to make out the words through the thick doors, she makes her way to his room. “Tell me.”

He’s not in bed, just sitting at the foot of it with a flame cupped in his hands.

“Father asked to be made heir to the throne,” Zuko says, and she can’t read the look on his face for once in the rainbow half-light. He stands up, dropping the room into blackness as he dissolves the fire. “Firelord Azulon didn’t like it.”

The door closes in her face.

———

When she finally sleeps, she’s woken up - this time by mother.

“Azula-“ she says softly “-I love you so much. Never forget who you are.”

Azula is half asleep, and it feels like a strange dream. But she wakes with the sunrise to the scent of mother’s perfume clinging to her.

She’s running before she can stop herself. She doesn’t know where, or why, or what exactly she’s running to, but she practically slams into Zuko in one of the halls.

“Where is she?” Azula demands, grabbing him hard by the front of his tunic. “What happened?”

“Gone.” He says, and again, she can’t quite read him. “So is Firelord Azulon.”

Azula shoves him, and he doesn’t fight back until she has him pinned down with a handful of fire inches from his face. She can read the look of fear.

“What happened?” She repeats, not loosening her grip until he stops trying to push her off.

“Father said Uncle Iroh was weak for giving up at Ba Sing Se. He asked to be made heir. Firelord Azulon said father had to be punished for asking for Uncle Iroh’s birthright and disrespecting his grief over Lu Ten.” When he says his cousin’s name, he still looks heartbroken for a second. “He said father would learn the pain of losing a child by sacrificing one of his own.”

She knows better, now, than to ask what she isn’t ready to be answered. She doesn’t ask which one.

———

Father is named Firelord, as grandfather’s last wish. No one dares to question it, even though the puzzle isn’t hard to fit together with the right information.

———

Somehow, she sees Zuko even less after that. She barely sees father either, but she’s found that that doesn’t feel quite as bad. Not that she misses Zuko. 

She just doesn’t like sitting in the garden without mother, or wandering the halls without a mother to find her way back to. So Azula throws herself into her lessons, and when she becomes the youngest living firebending master, she just nods and asks for more forms.

Calling lightning is exhilarating. It crackles and roars through her veins like no fire ever has before.  
It blows up in her face a few times, but she quickly learns how to keep her emotions and bending in separate compartments in her mind. Lightning requires control - she needs to control it, or it will tear her apart.

Aiming it is the hardest part. The pure power rushing through her veins wants to stay in her, and letting it go can feel like losing if she doesn’t hit her mark.

Maybe she doesn’t see Zuko as much because he’s the perfect target practice.

———

When Uncle Iroh finally returns from Ba Sing Se - or wherever he went after Ba Sing Se - she hardly recognises him. She’d heard he was torn up over Lu Ten’s death, but even Zuko didn’t mope for that long. There’s no one left to gently scold her, or tell her that everyone grieves differently (she wouldn’t have listened anyway, but she misses mother’s voice). Uncle Iroh looks like he let grief destroy him. He’s quiet, more shadow than man, whenever he thinks he’s alone. He arrives smiling, but he can’t act as well as Zuko. 

Azula lets him hug her once when he arrives, then realises she’s not getting anything other than tea and proverbs out of him within a day. So much for the famed General Iroh, Dragon of the West. He greets father as Firelord Ozai and doesn’t even mention his stolen throne.

She’s not going to gain anything by wasting her time with another cast-aside heir.

———

The second time Zuko’s status as the favourite can’t save him from father is a war meeting. He’s thirteen and she’s eleven, and father allows them both to come in and watch. Uncle Iroh is there too, and Azula had to use him to get in. She may not be the crown princess or the favoured heir, but she is by far the better strategist. 

She stays silent, watches, listens.  
Zuko doesn’t. 

They both learn that father only likes Zuko telling the truth when it’s the truth he wants to hear. Azula lies, calls it a good plan, suggests a more brutal attack. Later that day, father disappears into his office, dragging Zuko with him. She’s pretty sure the whole palace hears the screams.

Azula learns that being the favourite doesn’t mean you’re safe. 

———

She slips into his room one night to call him an idiot, but he just looks at her with that practiced blank expression and says nothing. Half of his face is covered in bandages, and that’s when she realises it will definitely scar, and she’ll never see his face looking normal again.

“You’re so stupid,” she says, but she can’t get the usual bite into her tone. “He could have killed you, dumdum.”

Zuko shakes his head, and still doesn’t talk, and Azula storms out when he won’t respond to her. 

When she sneaks back in in the middle of the night, he’s still awake. She shoves the plate of mochi smuggled from the kitchens at him and sits resolutely opposite him, grabbing a handful for herself.

“Try not to die,” she says, once she’s double and triple checked there’s no one around to hear it. “I don’t exactly need it, but it’s always nice to have someone around to make you look better in comparison.”

He doesn’t even blink at her. 

“Fine, if you’re not gonna do anything, I’ll just stay here.” 

Not that she wants to. She just knows Zuzu hates her hanging around his room. She manages a smirk as she shoves him over and crawls under the covers next to him. He’s warm; probably too warm, but she kicks him in the leg and tucks her head into the crook of his neck anyway.

They both pretend it never happened.

———

When the bandages come off, most of the servants stop looking at Zuko’a face. Father ignores it, as if pretending it isn’t there. Azula doesn’t, finding herself staring at the huge angry scar every time she sees him. He seems to hate both reactions, but Azula doesn’t stop. Mother would tell her to stop, but mother isn’t here. 

The day the bandages come off, she sees father, standing behind Zuko, watching her intently. It doesn’t take long for her to figure out that the warning wasn’t just for Zuko.

———

Uncle Iroh disappears.

Azula doesn’t get the full story of what happened with for years. All she knows is that one day he’s there, drinking his stupid tea and corralling servants into games of pai sho, and the next he’s gone. Father says his grief over Lu Ten (and he still scowls a little when he says her cousin’s name) has rendered him weak, and he left to recuperate his strength.

Zuko still isn’t talking (he doesn’t talk for another month, not until father’s already thin patience runs out, and whatever he does to Zuko snaps him out of his silence), the servants don’t know, and mother isn’t here to weasel the truth out of. Rumours fly, though, but they range from ridiculous to impossible. At this point, the most feasible option she’s heard is that he ran off to Ba Sing Se to open at tea shop.

He writes, once - says something stupid about a pilgrimage to the Spirit World. Azula knows that it’s possible, and he’s done it before, but even Uncle Iroh isn’t stupid enough to do that twice.

When she reads his rambling, directionless letter, she scoffs and burns it before Zuko can grab it out of her hand. She doesn’t realise why she’s so angry until later that night.

Uncle got to leave.

———

Then Azula gets to leave too.

———

Her first mission, at the age of thirteen, is to crush an uprising in Gaipan. Father gives her assignment himself. He may not treat her like Zuko, but at least he knows that she’s more capable. He recognises her skills and abilities, and he knows she’s good enough to do this.

Being out of the palace feels like a weight off her chest in a way she’ll never admit. She starts to love the sea, the sharp air and rocking deck beneath her feet that couldn’t be further from empty, echoing halls. No one hesitates to show her the respect and fear she’s owed. After years in Caldera, she had almost forgotten that she was a princess, a master bender, a person not given the deference she was due.

It takes a day to quash the rebellion at Gaipan, and then another to flush out the remaining dissenters. When she steps back onto her ship, it doesn’t feel like less than a month since she’s left home. It feels like a lifetime. The two week trip back feels all at once endless and over in an instant, but when she kneels before her father’s throne, he smiles at her.

———

“What was it like?” Zuko asks the evening she returns, after the banquet and celebrations are over. She sits at her mirror and lets down her topknot as he hovers in the doorway, and remembers that Zuko has never left this place.

She almost pities him, almost tells him just how great it was, but talking to Zuko means talking to father, and she knows what father can’t hear.

“It was nice,” she says, and meets his eyes in the mirror. “It was pretty easy, but getting some real life combat experience is rewarding.”

He nods once and leaves.

After that, she’s assigned tasks almost constantly. Father says she showed great skill, and he can’t let such a good asset go to waste. Soon, she spends more time out of Caldera than in it, and with her ruthless efficiency, father has no reason to change that.

———

Azula doesn’t need to be known as a dragon-slayer to command the same fear and respect her uncle did in his prime. 

She’s a firebending master, a lightning wielder, a descendant of Agni himself. 

Azula is unstoppable, and those who dare to try impede her quickly learn why so few do.

She reminds herself every night she spends in the palace.

———

She’s fourteen when she’s sent to capture the Avatar. The night before father tells here where she’s going, Zuko appears at her door and tells her about her mission. She’s not sure if it’s a friendly warning or just a warning.

She meets father just after dawn, and is leaving port just after midday. They can’t afford to be slow or hesitant- the Avatar is the biggest threat to the Fire Nation, and needs to be captured. Not that Azula’s too worried. She’s never failed a mission before.

It’s the first time she’s given a fleet, and the first time she has to work with Zhao. Captain - or Commander, she can never be bothered to remember- Zhao is arrogant and infuriating, but laughably easy to manipulate, so she lets him drone on and on about glory and power while she barely pretends to listen. He doesn’t have any glory, but his power is useful to her. 

Kyoshi Island is surrounded as soon as they arrive, blocking any travel in or out by sea with a blockade of warships. Azula sends out a small fleet of smaller vessels to get rid of any brave or stupid individuals, and disembarks. With a hundred soldiers and a team of Komodo rhinos, no one stands a chance. Not even the Avatar.

———

Until he escapes.

———

Azula leaves the fleet to trail after her on a smaller, faster boat loaded with projectiles to blast the Avatar’s giant furry beast out of the sky. She won’t make that mistake again - she gathers up scrolls on the Air Nomads and studies as they sail, scouring the scant records for anything the Avatar could use against her. She knows now that he can fly, and that he’s accompanied by an amateur waterbender and a slightly better trained warrior. At least she won’t have to worry about the Kyoshi Warriors, retreated back to their cowardly neutrality on their island.

The Avatar evades her for a while, but she’s getting closer and closer every day. The ragtag little team is mere hours ahead of her when they break out earthbenders from a prison rig, and the waterbender’s necklace left behind.

She calculates how fast the beast can fly, how often they’ll have to stop for supplies, how trained each of them are in combat. She has them cornered at Crescent Island, trapped in the temple, until the Avatar plays a card she didn’t know he had.

All she can do is stand and watch them fly away from the edge of the island as the temple shatters and crumbles behind her.

———

As much as she hates to admit it, Azula has to acknowledge that the Avatar and his allies are creative. Almost as creative as they are infuriating, somehow managing to slip out of her grasp time and time again. It feels awfully close to failure, but she hasn’t failed since she was six and missing a turn in a kata. Azula doesn’t fail. She wins, no matter what she has to do and who has to hurt to get her there. Winning creates losers, and Azula knows better than to lose.

The pirates are Zhao’s idea, and she lets him go for it so he doesn’t have time to bother her for a few hours. She doesn’t actually expect it to work, but she’s not going to pass up an opportunity in the form of a captured waterbender.

The girl glowers. Awfully bold for someone tied to a tree.

“I’ll never tell you where he is!”

“I don’t need you to.” Azula points out. “You’re bait.”

“Aang won’t let you-“

“Bait doesn’t talk.”

Unfortunately, it turns out that bait does talk, far too much for Azula’s taste. She tunes it out for a few minutes, watching the tree line, but finally, she snaps.

“If you’re going to keep whining on, at least make it useful!”

“Why would I help you?” The girl sneers.

She’s suddenly reminded of the necklace in her pocket, and her suspicion is proven correct when she pulls it out and the waterbender’s eyes go wide.

“Give me something useful, and I’ll give you something sentimental.”

“Sentimental?” The anger is suddenly back full force. Good, the look on the girl’s face was far too soft. “It’s the last thing I have from my mother! After your people murdered her! But I guess you wouldn’t understand loving someone.”

The last sentence is spat out like poison. Azula keeps her face perfectly neutral as she imagines burning the girl alive. “Get over yourself,” she sneers. “My mother is gone too, do you see me crying about it?”

The girl lets out a cry of rage, and actually manages to kick a splash of water at Azula. It might have been impressive if it had come anywhere near her. Azula is about to retort when the Avatar finally makes his entrance.

And then escapes, again.

———

The storm barely touches any of their ships - the metal monsters are practically invincible. She shuts down her crew’s protests the second they start. No princess of the Fire Nation surrenders to the sea and sky.

———

If anyone but Zhao had suggested the Yuyan archers, Azula might have considered it. But she doesn’t, because she recognises instantly the look in his eyes. This is no longer about power and glory to the nation, it’s about power and glory to him. She almost admires it, but there was only space for one person with that kind of drive on her mission, and Azula had no intention of sharing her spoils.

As useful as his fleet and influence is, she doesn’t need it. And if cutting ties makes him an enemy, so be it.

———

The bounty hunter doesn’t dare board her ship without permission, as much as she seems to want to. But the shirshu catches Azula’s eye, and she strikes a deal.

———

The Water Tribe boy is actually somewhat intelligent. The perfume trick works, and she allows herself to silently curse him as they fly away. Then she analyses the fight in her mind, and assesses the way the airbender moves, ducks and dodges. She won’t lose to him again.

———

And she doesn’t, because she never gets a chance to. 

The Avatar reaches the North Pole, and Zhao reaches new heights of stupidity. An invasion of the North, a veritable fortress of ice manned by the only people the landscape benefits. An attempt to steal her prize.

Talking her way onto his ship is laughably easy, with empty promises of an alliance and bringing the Avatar back, together. As soon as they drop anchor outside the walls, she slips out on a small skiff. Chaos erupts behind her, and she catches sight of the Avatar’s small form wreaking havoc on some of Zhao’s fleet (she lets herself chuckle quietly at that).

The ice walls tower over her, but anything melts with enough heat. She breaches the wall an hour later.

———

Tracking the Avatar through the city whilst remaining undetected takes longer than she’d like, and by the time she slips into the oasis, battle cries are ringing out outside. But there they are, the Avatar motionless - and, best of all, defenceless. The waterbender is on her feet instantly, and between Azula and her prize. The Water Tribe warrior boy is there too, along with a girl she doesn’t recognise. An important one, if her clothes and ornaments are anything to go by.

“Azula.” The waterbender snarls.

She smirks. “My apologies, I couldn’t be bothered to remember your name.”

A wave is bearing down on her in seconds, but Azula reduces it to a cloud of steam with ease. The fight is more vicious than usual, and she enjoys it much more. Clearly protectiveness brings out something in the waterbender she can almost admire. The others are doing something with the Avatar, but they don’t seem to be trying to get him away. She can deal with them later.

Within five minutes, her opponent is panting. Azula’s barely just begun.

“If you surrender, I’ll only set you on fire a little bit,” she taunts, melting through the ice spikes barrelling towards her. 

“Never!”

Tenacious. Tenacious and stupid, but still tenacious. 

Then the Avatar opens his eyes with a gasp, and says something about the moon. 

The waterbender hesitates just long enough for Azula to almost land a hit, driving her back and letting Azula get closer. She’s just about to strike again, this time to burn, when the Avatar flings her across the oasis with a gust of air. She lets out a hiss of fury, back on her feet in seconds when twin waves bear down on her.

It would have been nice to know the Avatar could master waterbending in a few days before she attacked him in a place made entirely of ice.

The restraints are dripping into puddles at her feet in mere moments, but they’re quickly reinforced.

“The moon is in danger!” The Avatar yells nonsensically. “We don’t have time to fight!”

“Of course,” Azula says dryly. “And I’m a four hundred foot tall platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings.”

The little group are quick to ignore her, huddling together to talk. Azula rolls her eyes, and is out of the ice in a few seconds.

She’s just made it to her feet when the warrior cries out a warning and the others spin around to face her:

When the waterbender goes still, she thinks for a moment she’s about to give up. But her eyes are wide and fixed on something behind Azula in a way she knows is too good to be a trick or diversion.

“Azula!”

It takes all her effort not to melt the North Pole to sludge the second she recognises his voice. 

She turns sharply, trying to glare her brother out of existence. Four soldiers are flanking him, not from her or Zhao’s crews. She recognises the seal of one of the nation’s elite divisions. Zuko’s dressed in white, clearly for camouflage, but it just makes his scar that much starker and clearer on his face. His swords (he must have finished training while she was gone) are hanging at his side, one hand resting on the hilt and ready to draw them. At least he isn’t underestimating her.

To the Avatar and his companions, he probably looks just as intimidating as people seem to think he is.

“What do you want, Zuzu?”

The Avatar lets out a quiet snort of laughter. “Zuzu?”

He doesn’t look away from her, and she stares back harder. It doesn’t have the same effect anymore. “Father wants you home.”

“And he sent you? How desperate is he?”

“Maybe,” Zuko says, not reacting to the barb, “I want to help you.”

“I’m not falling for that.”

“I want to help,” he repeats, sighing, and she almost doesn’t catch the way he dodges around a lie. 

He finally does react when she sends a burst of fire straight at his chest, barely managing to swipe it aside before it touches him. His swords are out in a second, but the posture he takes is defensive rather than offensive.

“What are you doing?” Zuko demands, ducking under another plume of flame. His soldiers tense, but make no move to interfere.

“What does it look like?” She sneers.

He glares at her, but looks half exasperated rather than scared. It makes her want to set him on fire so much more than she did a minute ago. “This is not the time,” he snaps, “for you to be childish. The Avatar-“

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence as she actually manages to catch the shoulder of his jacket on fire with a much hotter blast. Because he’s not just here for her, she realises with a cold jolt that roars into blazing fury. Zuko might get to win father, but he’s not getting her Avatar. 

“The Avatar is mine!”

“I’m here to help you!” And that’s true, but she bristles nonetheless. Even if they bring the Avatar back together, Zuko wins, and when Zuko wins, Azula loses.

“No thanks,” she says, and slashes more fire at him.

Zuko sighs almost tiredly, which he shouldn’t be able to do with so much blue fire flying around him - but then again, he lives to disappoint her. “I am under direct orders to help you complete your mission and bring you back to Caldera.”

“And again,” she replies, managing to keep her tone light and devoid of the snarl rearing up in her throat, “no thanks.”

It seems to finally click in his head. Zuzu’s always been a little slow. “Are you ignoring orders from the Firelord?” He asks, eyes (well, eye) wide with incredulity.

“Well done, it took you long enough,” she says sardonically, and her next fire blast forces him to take a step back as she takes advantage of his frozen shock.

The look in his eyes is close to fear, but it’s not because of the blue flames snapping at his heels. “Why?”

“Think about it, Zuzu.” She laughs, even though she wants to do something else. “I may have failed to capture the Avatar, but what’s father going to think if you can’t even bring your little sister home?”

He freezes, the next fireball searing a hole in his sleeve. “You’re... Azula, you’re disobeying father to spite me?”

And she laughs again, at the shock and horror painted across his face, ignoring the flicker of fear. “I suppose I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s 1:53am but I’m posting this because I’ve been holding off for like a month so I can finish chapters 2 and 3. Now it’s it’s looking like there’s gonna be a chapter 4 and I don’t have the restraint to delay publishing this lol
> 
> Also quick note: just because Ozai likes Zuko more doesn’t mean he’s by any means a good dad... like at all. And Zuko still isn’t a prodigy bender/strategist/politician, so yeah, Zuko still gets burned  
> Azula also has enough self preservation to not even risk getting Ozai angry while she’s within fire-range


	2. Interlude: Zuko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula never fails, but Zuko never loses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set towards the end of the last chapter; Zuko heads out to find Azula
> 
> The kids aren’t alright. At all. Someone get them therapy. So much therapy.

Zuko’s earliest memory is his mother screaming, and already knowing better than to react, feeling his father’s hand on his shoulder as they sit outside her rooms. Something is said about a baby, something about a princess, something about a sister. He’s too busy focusing on keeping still and not fidgeting in the way father hates so much.

It stops, at some point. It feels like years, but he’s told it was only a few hours.

Then he’s in the room and mother is smiling gently at the bundle in her arms. She looks exhausted, and a little scared. Zuko will only notice that when he recalls the scene, years later. In the moment, his eyes are fixed on the tiny little hand poking out of the red wrap, and the little black wisps of hair. He jolts forward to look, but father’s hand pulls him back sharply. 

They’re talking about sparks and bending, and he carefully tries to peer up without jostling the hand gripping him tightly.

She’s so small. 

When he’s finally allowed closer, allowed to look at her, allowed to sit up on the bed next to her and feel her tiny hand wrap around his fingers, he decides she’s the best baby in the world.

He says it, and mother laughs, and even father agrees. She’s a princess of the Fire Nation. Zuko is allowed to think she’s the best.

———

He doesn’t let that memory surface when he’s summoned to the throne room, already knowing why. It’s his duty to know why, just like it’s Azula’s duty to get it right, to not fail, to not necessitate this-

He doesn’t look up at the dais as he walks in, keeping his steps silent, and kneels before the Firelord. He knows every scuff and crack in the stone below him so well he could draw them from memory.

“Your sister has failed to capture the Avatar on Kyoshi Island,” father says, cold as ever. Zuko has followed the news, read all the reports - Kyoshi Island had been the first time Azula had crossed path with him, her first - and last - chance. It would be harsh to declare it a failure if it weren’t Azula. A child of Firelord Ozai should only need one opportunity to win. “I’ll allow her to continue her pursuit for now, but you will go after her. Bring her back.”

“Yes, my lord. And the Avatar?”

“By all means,” father says, and there is a hint of amusement in his voice, “if you manage to capture the Avatar too, bring him to me.”

Zuko’s value has never lain in his strength or combat skills. 

“I trust you have read her reports,” father continues. “You can calculate her course from there. Any more information you need can be provided.”

“Thank you, father.” He already knows what he needs to do, to plan, to study. He’ll bring his scrolls on the past Avatars - in case it would be easier to locate the airbender and wait for Azula to come to him. A hundred things he needs to consider, and a hundred more he will consider just in case. “I would appreciate a day to prepare before I leave.”

“Granted. A ship will be ready for you by tomorrow. You may depart the day after.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Dismissed.”

He bows lower, then rises and finally risks a glance at the Firelord before he leaves. A shadow behind the wall of flame, sitting regal and imposing on the throne. Another thought, another feeling, tries to fight its way up, but he has no time to indulge it.

The battle is back on, and the stakes are higher than ever, but for once, they’re in his favour.

———

By the time he reaches his room, he has a mental list of the things he needs to pack. Weapons, armour, his Avatar scrolls and any more he can have brought from the palace library, maps of every landmass and island he might encounter, every scrap of information that could give him an edge over Azula. He desperately needs an edge. 

Zuko isn’t afraid, because fear festers into weakness, and he hadn’t been allowed weakness in years. 

Azula is smart, cunning, endlessly talented in bending and strategy, but she is also reckless and too young to see it. Azula will burn the world to ash if it gets in her way. Azula will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. But so will Zuko. 

Azula has failed, for the first time. Zuko has fallen into it so many times it’s scarred into his skin, and clawed himself out again and again. Zuko knows how to fail, how to take the punishment and get up and try again until he succeeds.

She doesn’t know how, doesn’t know the rules of the game, doesn’t know that a failure is not a loss. Azula never fails, but Zuko never loses.

———

He’s three days into the journey by sea, further than he’s ever been from Caldera, from father, when he finally lets himself think about his sister. Logically, he knows father can’t tell what he thinks, can’t read his mind. But the instinct is as natural as breathing, to only do and say and think and be what his father wants whenever the man is anywhere near him. 

Zuko isn’t naïve. His place at father’s side, his ability to stay in his good graces, is delicately balanced on a bladed edge. Hesitation will tip him over; fear will knock him sideways; weakness will drive the blade into his chest. When Zuko fails, he fails once and never repeats the error. Even a child who touches an open flame knows better than to do it again.

He doubts mother taught Azula the lessons father imparted on him. She preferred to keep her violence in her words, hissed behind closed doors when she thought he wasn’t there to overhear.

(“What is wrong with that child?”)

(“It’s okay, Azula, your brother is wrong. He’s bad sometimes.”)

(“You’re turning him into a monster, Ozai!”)

Azula must miss her. His little sister, who got bedtime stories and hugs and kisses and “I love you, my darling girl” and never learned how to fail or suffer. Mother’s cruelty to Azula lay in never teaching her how to bear pain and thrive on it.

The little girl, the burning gold eyes, the hands always flitting up to make sure not a single hair is out of place. The warm presence beside him in the days after his failure in the war room, his failure to avoid being burned. The high pitched voice demanding he pick her up and help her reach the kitchen shelf. The hand wrapped around his finger, the face tucked into red swaddling cloth.

Princess Azula is a threat, a danger, the biggest risk to his position at father’s side. Zuko’s little sister is still the best baby in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone on the last chapter asked why Ozai favoured Zuko, and it’s more deeply explored in Zuko’s full chapter later, but a tiny bit here. In essence, Ozai recognised Zuko’s unwavering loyalty, desperation to please his father, (slightly terrifying) willingness to do absolute anything to achieve his goals and thought ‘ah yes, this will make a great child soldier’
> 
> He then looked at Azula and thought ‘oh fuck, this ones even better but would definitely kill me in my sleep if given the opportunity’
> 
> Anyway please bother me [on my tumblr](https://koiotic.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> I post snippets, ideas and general rambling [on tumblr](https://koiotic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
